Channel One News has pulled together one of the world's thornier regions with videos, a slide show, quizzes and links. It may not give you today's news, but it does sum up the big news of recent days as well as give a good summary of the region's history.

Phil Meyer at UNC-Chapel Hill, Steve Doig at Arizona State University and Barbara Hansen at USA Today created this Web site to help journalists handle the math concepts behind computer-assisted reporting. Phil even shares his math competency test for journalists. Go ahead, give it a whirl - the answers are explained.

Created by the same company that gave us Allwords, Allmath.com has glossaries, converters, more math links - even math jokes: How do we know that the following fractions are in Europe? A/C, X/C and W/C ? Because their numerators are all over C's

No, that's not an opinion (although we happen to agree with it). That's the name of this site
from Rod Pierce, who was an engineer before becoming a university professor. He now develops software for private clients and run this site.

The people site of the Pearson Education site breaks down its biographies by several categories (e.g., women, sports personalities, explorers, etc.). It includes a search engine by name. And it has quizzes.

The Biography Channel's search engine covers 25,000 people, or you can search alphabetically. This site starts with Flavius Aėtius, a Roman general who fought off the barbarians for 20 years, and ends with Polish mathemetician Antoni Zygmund, who fled the Nazis. The site also has quizzes.

In addition to speeches, videos and maps of historic events, this site has world timelines by century (in case you knew that Allesandro Volta invented the electric battery sometime during the 1800s but not exactly when) and a weekly quiz.

Yes, some of these quizzes from Sheppard Software use license plate games to test your math logic. Alll of the quizzes assume you already know some math - but if you get the answer wrong, you'll be told how to get the correct answer.

For reasons known only to Sheppard Software, this site divides its astronomy games by day. Monday's quizzes include a question on which two planets are the only ones that can't be seen from the Earth without a telescope (with a handy explainer of the correct answer). Saturday's quizzes challenge you to know which planet has a mountain three times higher than Mount Everest. And no, we aren't going to tell you.

Sheppard Software shares a package of quizzes on 10 regions of the world, including the United States, and an 11th quiz on "the world." The quizzes start on the "learning" level and proceed from "beginner" status to "cartographer" expertise.